


broken windows

by shinsxoh



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: First Love, Friends to Lovers, Introspection, M/M, Pre-Idol, Self-Discovery, Slow Burn, Strangers to Friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 09:38:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19423348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinsxoh/pseuds/shinsxoh
Summary: Minhyuk thinks he is too much. Hyungwon thinks he is too little.Together, they might be just enough.(alternatively: minhyuk meets hyungwon when he is seventeen years old. they promise to stay best friends forever and ever and ever.)





	broken windows

**Author's Note:**

> new style, new me.  
> based on all the little snippets of hyunghyuk predebut life we get to see - like them listening to IU together, or how they moved to Seoul and shared that one blanket when it was cold.  
> monbebe TW for hints of no mercy RIGHT at the end of part 2 (it's not in detail ok dont worry). this is a style and ship i haven't tried before SO feedback would be really appreciated !!!  
> (if there are mistakes in formatting shh i'll fix em soon enjoy pls)

Minhyuk thinks he has always been too much.

The realisation came one morning while the bitter tang of night still sharpened the air he inhaled and the crunch of grass under his feet was thick with fallen snow. Watching the gentle drift of crystals as they settled on the ground, feeling the sting of cold prickling his fingers while the melted flakes sought to collect in a pool on his palm, he realised he was too much. Enough that people liked him. Too much that they’d never chose him.

It is not a particularly devastating thing, to be too much for those around you. It feels just like the second after a punch - when it does not hurt, not yet, but the air has left struggling lungs and lips are parted in surprise. The air does leave Minhyuk’s lungs in a soft exhale that billows into a cloud around him. 

And then he continues to school.

It does not change anything, knowing he is too much. Most often catastrophes lead to a heightened sense of normalcy. His friends smiles are wider. His teachers eyes are brighter. Even the colours of the dingy high school hallway morph into vivid hues, the grey of the lockers suddenly a baby blue, the beige bulletin board an astounding pastel pink.

And Minhyuk knows he is too much that day. Too much in sound and words and laughter and  _ existence _ but he cannot change. He tries, for a moment, to bite his tongue. To withdraw his hand. To stop himself from being certainly there for a definite amount of time.

It does not work. The few seconds render him so lonely his heart begins to hurt while it beats quietly in his chest.

That is when the second revelation of that day occurs.

Number one, Lee Minhyuk is too much.

Number two, there is nothing he can do about it.

And he is alright with that, he thinks, while he walks home alone and the singing birds are not enough company. There is more to life than being just enough. So long as nobody gets close to him, so long as they stay at arms length to keep away from his everything, he is okay with being too much. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Minhyuk, in himself, is a person who collects other entities. Stores them deep in his subconscious so that he always has support close by. Notices people, because he figures he wants people to do the same thing - notice  _ him _ .

And that’s how he starts to notice that one student around his school. Nothing more than a stranger in a finite town with a finite amount of people, but there is something about the aura of this tall, gangly boy that catches his attention. Something that tells Minhyuk he is more than the small town branding such a grey place has cast over his youthful skin.

Minhyuk always sees the stranger as he walks to class on Monday mornings and Wednesday afternoons. Every other day in the cafeteria. Each crease of his uniform is pressed exactly. His blazer is usually wrinkled at the elbows, and his hair falls over his eyes in a downy black waterfall that seems to settle just over his eyes.

He does not know why he is drawn to the stranger. The stranger has always been there. Always lived there. But Minhyuk did not remember him until now.

A handkerchief is always tied around his neck. Tucked beneath the pressed collar of his uniform, the knot was pulled tight enough to look neat, lose enough that if the corner was pulled it might all fall apart.

And Minhyuk starts to notice when the stranger changes his handkerchief. It is always Red on Mondays, always Blue on Fridays. Sometimes Tuesdays are Yellow or Green, and Wednesdays carry Pink or Orange.

One Thursday, when it is dreary outside and the sun had not been seen in days, his handkerchief is patterned with tiny red roses on a background of porcelain white. Minyuk sees it while he hurries to class, hair dripping down his face from the torrent of rain outside, boots squeaking on the floor as he comes to a sudden stop.

He wants to ask. Ask why his handkerchief is patterned, that day. Ask how he could find so much joy when the sky is so sad. Ask what could have possibly happened to encourage him to switch his routine, don a pattern instead of plain colour, be a little more than the ghost he appears around school.

But then the stranger disappears around the corner, and Minhyuk is late to class.

  
  
  
  
  


When Minhyuk decides to learn how to dance, it is a spur of the moment decision, on one cold December morning where the trees have had their colour leached from their twisting branches and the bitter cold does not give way to snow.

The dance studio in his school is small. Mirrors line one wall. A computer connected to a speaker amongst a mess of wires sits in one corner. In the centre, an instructor stands, stretching out his hamstrings.

“I’m here to learn?” Minhyuk says, bounding over to the man who wears a shirt so bright it hurts his eyes.

The instructor looks him up and down. Tugs his arms until they are held outright, commands him to stretch his feet and bend his neck.

The men tells Minhyuk he’s promising. Minhyuk beams.

_ Promising. _ He does not know what that means, not quite, just that the attention pools warmth in his stomach that seeps into his limbs and manifests as a smile so big his eyes crinkle into crescent moons.

Promising.

Minhyuk can work with Promising.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


From that moment on, Minhyuk is a dancer.

A pretty terrible one at that. It’s not like he’s not trying - because he is, he really is - but there is too much of him to move around. If he focuses on his feet to get the turn the instructor wants, his hands flail and his fingers separate until it looks like he’s reaching for something he just can’t catch. If he attempts to force sharpness into the quick movements of his arms, his legs turn to jelly, knobbly knees crashing together as he feels the music.

But he doesn’t care, not really. He’s having  _ fun _ . He enjoys dancing, loves moving in time to melancholy beats or quick steps. Laughs even when he falls over and his instructor chastises him because he was having so much fun he almost forgot to breathe.

One day, during the last period before the winter holidays, Minhyuk stays late to practice his routine. At best it is amateur, at worst painfully simple, but he practices again and again with the song on repeat until his limbs feel like molten lead, crawling across the shiny floor at a thousand degrees, ebbing with red hot rock and sizzling to the touch.

And then the door opens.

Minhyuk stops, surprised, sweat dripping in rivulets down his face and hair pushed back from his forehead when the stranger enters the room.

_ The _ stranger.

His handkerchief is a rosy beige that day, tied in a perfect knot - not too tight, not too loose. Just right.

The boy pauses when he sees Minhyuk. For a brief moment their eyes met.

Minhyuk swears he melts, there and then. That the molten rock engulfs his body and carries him a million feet underground. 

His eyes are the deepest brown, framed by fluttering lashes and noticeably deep double eyelids. His skin is still dusted with caramel from the summer months, hair a shiny black cut in a fringe that flops over his eyes. Eyes swollen with tiredness, sticky in the corners, puffy mouth parted in some semblance of emotion.   
Then he looks away.

Puts his backpack in the corner, shakes his trench coat from his slim shoulders, pushes the pile against the mirror while he stretches.

And Minhyuk can’t help but stare when his leg comes to rest on the barre. His feet are perfectly poised in his plimsolls, legs so long they seem to go on forever, face blank while his body dips into a stretch and his neck rolls forward in a show of supplety.

The stranger catches his stare in the mirror. Minhyuk’s cheeks grow hot as the molten rock rushes to his face, and he shuffles into the corner, unsure whether he should leave or not. He had never seen the stranger in the dance rooms before. Was dancing something he preferred to do in secret? Should he slip out the door and leave him be?

But then Minhyuk decides it does not matter. He wanted to practice. He should do that.

Distracted, Minhyuk attempts to carry out the rest of his basic routine. It is clunky and he overreaches each movement, unable to hit the beat, struggling to keep in time, but still dancing. He is dancing.

And so is the stranger.

So fluidly. So beautifully. His long limbs twist and twirl and speak a thousand words in a gentle language Minhyk cannot name. They flow together harmoniously, a song of limbs in tender tandem, so natural it feels like it is the only thing he has ever done. Almost as if he is too little for this world, too light he could be carried away by the wind.

When the stranger finishes, his face is open for the first time, pupils blown wide in exertion, lips panting while he struggles for air, eyebrows drawing together in an unsatisfied frown. Minhyuk watches him click his neck, stretch his arm, and then go again.

He decides to leave.

The stranger does not watch him go.

  
  
  
  
  


From then on, dancing becomes something they just  _ do. _ Together. As if they had discussed it, planned to find each other at the same time every Thursday when the rest of the school has already left and the buildings are hauntingly empty with the echo of laughter and talk.

At first Minhyuk is surprised when the stranger returns at the strange time the week after the bleak holidays.

But then it becomes normal. Minhyuk dances. So does the stranger. Minhyuk leaves before the other. Long, elegant limbs burn silhouettes onto his closed eyes every time he sleeps.

On the first Thursday of February, Minhyuk decides to stay a little longer. There is nobody waiting for him at home and he almost has the last few repetitions just right. He wanted to make the instructor proud. Turn  _ Promising _ into  _ Perfect. _   
  


If the stranger notices he stays longer, he does not make it known. His delicate piano music drifts beneath Minhyuk’s electrical buzz - a symphony of two sounds which should not fit but somehow walked hand in strange hand.

Shock caused him to stumble when the door is thrown open. The  _ clang! _ echoes across the wooden floor and bounces from the trembling mirrors. His heart beats like marching men in his chest and his breath threatens to stop.

It is a janitor. His blue clothes wrinkle unflatteringly around a round stomach and his beady eyes are both exasperated and annoyed.

“We’re closing, now. Out.”

Then he disappears.

They both hurry to grab their stuff, individual spheres that don’t touch - the stranger, bundling up his trench coat, slinging his bag onto his forearm. Minhyuk, frantically stuffing his jumper into his backpack, slipping on his shoes with the laces undone.

They both end up outside. It is snowing. There is some distance between them, though neither of them move, dazed eyes staring at the concrete covered in white and the grey sky discolouring the air. 

“What’s your name?”

The stranger is shocked at the brazen words that fall from his mouth. For a moment, Minhyuk worries he’s been too much. Gnaws on his lip with teeth that taste like mint gum. Shifts on his feet with anxiety tumbling over and over in his stomach.

“Chae Hyungwon,” he says, and Minhyuk melts. His voice is so velvety, so smooth. Like the soft caress of silk on skin or the warmth of a bath filled with satiny soap. He wants to bottle the sound and keep it close to him forever, wants to crack open the cork every night before he falls asleep just so he can hear it in his dreams.

“I’m Lee Minhyuk,” he says in reply. Hyungwon’s blank stare seems to invade every corner of his mind. When he nods, it is expressionless.

“Nice to meet you, Minhyuk.”

“You too,” he breathes. The taller unfolds his beige coat, slings it on both his shoulders, ruffles his hair so the snowflakes melt and then begins his walk home.

“Wait!” Minhyuk calls, grabbing his backpack and hurrying after him. “Where do you live?”

“Gang-hu street.”

“I live just down from there. In Gansu?”

“Cool,” says Hyungwon, and keeps walking. His strides are so long Minhyuk has to jog to catch up, hugging his bag to his chest. From the side the other boy looks like a painting. The curve of his nose is higher than most, the pout of his lips a perfect ‘v’, his deep eyelids shadows that cast interesting stories over his smooth tan skin.

“Can I walk with you?” Minhyuk says, lips parted in awe that expels his body in an icy cloud.

“If you want.”

And that is that.

Minhyuk walks alongside Hyungwon. He is tall, but the other is taller. Minhyuk clutches his backpack to his chest. The other has his hung over both shoulders. Minhyuk hurries with his head bowed and feet tapping in the snow. The other focuses on some vacant point in the air and meanders with slow, elegant steps.

“I think you’re a really good dancer,” Minhyuk says suddenly. His cheeks feel hot as they turn the corner from the park onto concrete. “You probably hear that a lot.”

Hyungwon looks at him.

“Thank you, Minhyuk,” he says.

Minhyuk stops walking.

His own name washes over him like a shock of cold water. It evaporates when it reaches the molten rock of his core, cheeks blossoming a violent red in the cold weather and his mind spinning and spinning and spinning until the sky and the snow look the same.

Eventually they come to a break in the bleak concrete streets that separates both their houses. Minhyuk knows Hyungwon’s road, because it is where his parents would have lived, where the getting-by meet the comfortable. He wonders - does Hyungwon have more money than him? Does his mother buy his handkerchiefs?

“I never see you walking to school,” Minhyuk says. They both hover awkwardly by the pathway junction.

Hyungwon doesn’t reply.

“I always wake up early,” he speaks again, as if the prompt will inspire the quiet boy to talk, teetering forward on the balls of his feet like a robin about to take flight.

“I always wake up late,” Hyungwon replies.

Minhyuk hesitates, before kicking at the ground. “I’ll be here at seven thirty, tomorrow. If you want to walk with me,”

“Alright,” says Hyungwon, and then he disappears.

Minhyuk watches his long coat sway while he ambles away. His steps are light and quiet, hushed, delicate. Afraid to make more noise than the falling snow. His black hair is a shock in the winter landscape and his hands are shoved in his pockets.

  
  
  
  
  
  


The next day, Minhyuk waits for Hyungwon on the corner where they bid farewell and went seperate ways.   
He waits, and he waits. Hops about on his feet. Kicks a stone into the gutter. Tries (without much success) to stop the chatter of his teeth while the cold seeps under his skin.

He checks the time.

_ 7:32. _

Minhyuk sighs, and then leaves for school.

He tries not to be disappointed.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Hyungwon does not meet him the entire next week, even though Minhyuk waits. His friends ask why he is five minutes later to the cafeteria in the morning. Minhyuk shrugs and says he set he was finding his shoes.

The streets are strangely bleak without Hyungwon. Whiteness bleeds into the cracks between brick walls and concrete roofs. A dreary grey blanket has settled over the urban attractions of his small Korean town. The wires that pull across the sky seem to be the bars of a cage, trapping him, ensnaring his feet while he drags them through the flurry of snow that sticks to his hair and burns his face.

  
  
  
  
  


Exactly a week from their first meeting, Minhyuk stumbles down the street, passing house after quiet house sat tired in their plots as if waiting for permission to leave. The wind is bitter and the ice sulks in the corners of concrete streets or puddles that froze overnight.

When he looks up at the corner usually empty, he stops in his tracks.   
  


A silhouette stands at the edge. His back is to the wall of a garden as if he is afraid to be in the open. His hands are shoved in his pockets and his shock of black hair is as dark as the night itself.

Hyungwon.

When Minhyuk runs the last few metres to appear in front of him, there is already a smile on his face, a direct contrast to Hyungswons puffy eyelids and drowsy stare.

“I dislike being up this early,” he mumbles in greeting. His hair corkscrews over his handsome features and leave him looking suitably exhausted.

“You could have slept in,” Minhyuk grins.

Hyungwon looks at him. “I know.” 

And somehow those two words held all the meaning in the world. It is a sudden understanding, between them both, that Hyungwon would have been asleep if he hadn’t purposely woken up early, hadn’t purposely dragged himself from dreamland and planted himself in reality to wait for the flighty, frantic character that was Lee Minhyuk.

The rose of his cheeks showed he was even a little embarrassed. As if his own actions shocked even him.

They walk to school. Minhyuk talks, nonstop. About class. About home. About the new pencil case he brought because the zipper on his old one broke, about how he really wants an iPod but they’re too expensive and besides, Mrs Park would never let him listen to music in biology.

Hyungwon listens to it all. Or so Minhyuk supposed, because the tall boy did not talk much, merely scuffed his boots on the concrete and stared into the distance with rich brown eyes.

When the taller came to an abrupt stop, Minhyuk stumbled over his uncoordinated feet and cursed.

“We’re here,” said Hyungwon. He was not wrong. The formidable boring buildings of school seemed to be structures of precise concrete thousands of years old where they stood stoic and unyielding. Minhyuk sighed.

“I guess,” he grumbled, but then turned to the boy with a beaming grin. “But that’s okay! You can come hang out with me, and my friends. They’d love to meet you. You can tell them about dance!”

Hyungwon looks at him.

His lips are puffy, eyes drowsy with sleep despite the bitter chill of the air whipping at his long hair. There is something in his face that Minhyuk can’t read - something just out of reach, withdrawn from view, hovering in the depths of his unwavering gaze that fills the smaller with a dreadful feeling of uncertainty. Was he being too much? Did Hyungwon dislike him?   
He wondered - Minhyuk always seemed too much of a person. Why did it feel like Hyungwon felt too little?

“I think I’m just going to study,” says Hyungwon.

It is a strange feeling that wells up in Minhyuk when he watches the boy shove his hands into his pockets and begin walking away. There is no farewell, no promise of next time. Just an avoidance of eye contact and the soft fall of his footsteps on the ground.

“Thank you for walking with me?” Minhyuk calls. The words tumble over themselves and get lost in the freezing air, morphing to form a hesitant question rather than an exuberant statement.

Hyungwon looks back. “I’ll see you at dance.”

And, somehow, that is the best thing Minhyuk has ever heard. He thinks that, should he live until he’s ninety-five, that single phrase will still repeat over and over and over in his head until each syllable is engraved on his heart.

_ I’ll see you at dance. _

To others it may not have been much. But to Minhyuk, determined Minhyuk, Minhyuk who just wished to befriend the beautiful boy with the beautiful voice and beautiful dance, it was so much more.

Because Hyungwon seemed so little he was almost a ghost, but those five words were so incredibly  _ real. _

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Dance happens just how it did the previous week. They practice separately in bubbles that don’t touch. Occasionally, Minhyuk will trek to the water fountain huffing with aching muscles and sweaty palms, or Hyungwon will spin one too many times across the polished floor and their worlds threaten to collide.

But only sometimes, and even then, it is not enough.

When the janitor slams through the door to instruct them to leave, Hyungwon does so quickly. Quietly. Excuses himself without a goodbye and leaves Minhyuk alone and exhausted.

The boys lip wobbles.

Disappointment pricks at his eyes and threatens to spill as some semblance of tears. There is not much he can do, not really, to make Hyungwon trust him. But he hoped at least the tall boy would wait. Just so they could walk together. Was Minhyuk really that difficult to be around? Was his too much a disaster to those around him?

In that moment, he felt sadness. True, raw sadness, because he liked Hyungwon, liked his strange handkerchiefs and beautiful dancing and intense, rich brown eyes with caramel skin.

But Hyungwon does not like him.

When he steps outside, however, he is confronted by a lone silhouette draped in a trench coat waiting by the metal gates.

Hyungwon.

Minhyuk cannot contain his shock at seeing the boy waiting for him. Not even the slap of cold air could mimic the wideness of his eyes or surprised part of his lips.

“You waited,” Minhyuk says, disbelief staining his voice.

Hyungwon shrugs. “I guess.”

And then they walk.

This time it takes a little longer for Minhyuk to start talking. He hurries alongside Hyungwon with quick steps and awe sparkling in his boyish eyes. Hyungwon is so  _ handsome. _ Hyungwon is so  _ cool. _ He wants to be friends with Hyungwon, so badly, so terribly. Wants to see him smile. Wants to see him laugh, just once, just enough to calm the cacophony of his beating heart.

Eventually Minhyuk begins to talk, once more, about anything and everything and nothing much at all. Family. Friends. Words running together like rivers down mountains and splitting into tangents like deltas at sea.

When they reach their point of separation, Minhyuk bids farewell with an excited skip and wave.

Hyungwon hesitates. For just a moment he waits, face blank, nose red, gaze fixated on Minhyuk’s happiness as if he too wished to emulate it.

Then he gives the smallest of waves, and turns on his heel to leave.

Minhyuk is possibly the happiest he has ever been when he sleeps that night, dreams haunted by the smallest of waves and the biggest, most beautiful eyes.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Minhyuk does not know how it becomes the norm for them to walk to school together. Sometimes Hyungwon is there at half past seven, sometimes Minhyuk waits until seven thirty-two and leaves without looking back. An unspoken agreement hoveres between them - in that Minhyuk does not ask, and Hyungwon does not tell. 

The only certain thing with the tall boy who is not quite there is that he always wears a handkerchief, and it is always tied just right.

One Thursday, when the bitter cold is slowly giving way to the subtle waning warmth of spring, and the tips of bulbous daffodils and the vivid green of grass peaks through the settling frost, they are dancing together as they always do.

Apart. Separate. Existing in different spheres for the few hours they have alone together, not daring to touch.

But then, Hyungwon stops dancing.

Minhyuk does not notice, at first, far too wrapped up in the fluidity of his limbs as he attempts to recreate a movement arc on time. His bones seemed awkwardly locked and it was difficult to maneuver them right.

But then he freezes when he notices Hyungwon staring at him. The waterfall of his black hair hangs limp over his eyes and his brows are drawn together in a strange show of expression.

“Try a different angle,”

Minhyuk sucks in a sharp breath that tastes of salt and shock. Hyungwon was talking to him. While they were  _ dancing. _

“What?” Minhyuk chokes out. There seems to be a hand on his throat, digging it’s nails into his voice box, cutting of all chance of air.

“Try a different angle with your shoulder. Like this,” Hyungwon says, demonstrating with an elegant arm the same movement Minhyuk was attempting, but this time far more fluid.

Minhyuk tries.

Hyungwon smiles.

It was barely there, but it was enough to take Minhyuk’s breath away, to completely steal the oxygen from the air as if he was drowning and burning alive at the same time.

Hyungwon  _ smiled. _

And it is beautiful. The single quirk of his lips into a pressed curve and the slight crinkle of the lines around his eyes was undeniably ethereal. Glazed apples of his cheeks pushed out ever so slightly, making him look younger. Happier.

“No,” he says and then all of a sudden he is in front of Minhyuk, guiding his arm with gentle hands that seemed too big and yet still appropriately slim. “Like this,”

And suddenly it clicks. The subtle change in the height of his shoulder made all the difference. Suddenly his body felt free, lighter, like a bird whose wings carried them through the fresh breeze, and it was all thanks to Hyungwon.

“Thank you,” Minhyuk gasps, grin forming on his face as he tries it again and again, easier each time, smile almost cascading into an explosion of giggles.

“No problem,” says Hyungwon, and returns to his dance.

The places he held his hand burn holes in Minhyuk’s clothes and sizzle against the slow-moving of his molten core. 

When they both walk home that day, Minhyuk still thinks his clothes smell like fire, and he hopes the other doesn’t notice.

  
  
  
  
  


It is always awkward whenever they must say goodbye. An odd sort of unease blossoms between them like the daffodil bulbs peeking through the spring frost, not necessarily unwanted, but undesired. The feeling hovers between them when Minhyuk waves goodbye to Hyungwon only for the other to offer something miniscule - a nod, a hand, a sliver of a smile that is barely even pressed lips.

But, on the second Thursday of March, Hyungwon stops on his side of the road.

Usually a long stretch of concrete separates them - a stoic sea of grey that bleeds into the dim sky while they stand a thousand miles apart. Hyungwon, on the side of the well-off. Minhyuk, on the side of the getting-by.

But this time, Hyungwon follows him across the road.

Minhyuk looks at him. While his nose burns in the cold, it is numbed by his surprise, the anaesthetic of shock causing his mouth to part and pillowy air billow about him.

“Can I walk you to your house?” Hyungwon asks.

Minhyuk melts. A thousand degrees, pools into the cracks of the derelict road, sizzling and bubbling at the simple words that light a thousand candles in his core and turns his blood to molten rock.

“Sure,” he breathes in reply. The word tastes like hope.

So, Hyungwon walks him back. They are both silent, unyielding. Minhyuk watches the other’s face as it stares blankly at his own feet. The only sounds are their breathing, and the slowly increasing howl of the wind.

Both stop walking outside his house.

The door is a peeling brown. The windows are perfect squares, the knobbly concrete of it’s flat face giving way to eaves that drip with ice due to leaky pipes. The single bush looks lonely on his small lawn - barely alive, it’s cracked branches reach out in thin fingers that bend in all the wrong places.

Minhyuk looks at Hyungwon.

The boy is thinking. That much is certain, thanks to the small crease that pushed between his brows. His rich brown eyes drink in the sight of Minhyuk’s house with a fear hard to pinpoint. The smaller stands, staring at the shadow, watching his black hair blow in the gentle breeze and hugging his backpack to his chest.

“Do you.. Want to come in?” Minhyuk asks quietly. The words taste like hesitation.

“Why?” Hyungwon frowns.

Minhyuk shrugs, teetering on the edges of his feet, wondering, dreaming what it would be like to grow robins wings and fly so far away that Hyungwon could not see his burning cheeks.

“We could make cupcakes?”

Hyungwon looks at him.

Minhyuk thinks, in that moment, there is not a boy more beautiful than the sleepy Hyungwon and his lidded eyes and puffy, pink lips.

“Alright,” he says.

Minhyuk takes back every single feeling of happiness that has ever taken root in him before.

For that one word makes roses bloom in his lungs and he finds it hard to breathe.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Hyungwon looks strange in Minhyuk’s kitchen. The boy is too long, too thin, so little of him he hovers in the doorway much like a ghost. He waits for Minhyuk to give him permission to step across the threshold, and his familiar quiet throbs with something more forbidden when his wide eyes take in the clutter of papers on the table or the old crayon drawings tacked to the fridge.

He watches with odd trepidation as Minhyuk whisks himself into a frenzy, dragging bowls from cupboards with a clatter that echoes breaking china, dumping butter and flour on the table, crouching down to flick the oven on with the strength of an entire hurricane.

Hyungwon is the unmoving rock in the tumultuous ocean that is Minhyuk. He is precise and calm, unreadable while he measures sugar to the nearest gram, following the recipe book displayed for them both to see.

Minhyuk talks. Hyungwon does not, but, every so often, he gave one of his rare smiles. His eyes would crinkle, lips twitch in shy happiness, usually distant gaze suddenly too present for mere moments at a time. It happens when a gasp slipped from Minhyuk’s mouth as he spilt water down his uniform. It happens when an entire teaspoon of flour exploded into a cloud on the wall when he grew too excited talking, it happens when Minhyuk leaned in really close to Hyungwon’s measurements and their eyes met for the briefest of moments.

“What?” Hyungwon asks. The bag of chocolate chips he holds in his hand balances precariously on the edge of the scale. It smells like cocoa and butter, like vanilla and the delights of being five years old, of smearing icing on chubby faces and wiping fingers on striped shirts.

It is then that Minhyuk realises Hyungwon has the very unnerving habit of maintaining eye contact. He finds himself falling, deeper and deeper, into the dark brown that encompases his entire body, a darkness that is comforting, even, desirable, a blanket of safety with flecks of excitement that never want to let him go.

And then a pitched voice echoes through the kitchen and the spell is broken.

“What is all of this?” a greying woman gasps. She stands in the doorway wearing a pencil skirt and padded blazer. A briefcase is held in one hand - the slight fraying handle mimicking her cracking foundation.

“Hi Mom!” Minhyuk grins, bounding over to give her a floury kiss on the cheek. “We’re baking! See!”

“Oh I see,” the woman laughs. It is a strange sound, grated with age and exhaustion, but she seems rather fond while she places her case on the messy table and turns to Hyungwon. “Hello. Welcome..?”

The boy bows. “Hyungwon.”

Minhyuk’s mom smiles, although it is confused, perplexed by the formality the other shows. “Hyungwon. It’s lovely to meet you. I apologise. Usually my house is much tidier.”

“It is alright. It’s cosy,” Hyungwon shrugs. There is a quiet to his voice Minhyuk has never heard. It ceases to calm the uneasiness blossoming in the kitchen - Minhyuk watching Hyungwon, Hyungwon watching his mom, his mom brushing down her grey sleeves.

When she leaves, her voice remains in a shout. “I told you to stop getting flour on my countertops!”

“Sorry, Mom-  _ Oh!” _

A tremendous gasp falls from Minhyuk’s lips. A billowing cloud of white explodes around him, the musty taste of raw flour coating his dry tongue. The spilt ingredient had slipped from his hands with a mere crinkle of paper but now the entire room was coated in a thin layer of white snow.

“Whoops?” Minhyuk says. He had not  _ meant _ to drop the flour. It had just fell through his hands as he spun with too much enthusiasm - always  _ too much. _

But then Hyungwon laughs.

Hyungwon  _ laughs. _ It happens slowly, when Minhyuk is still frozen in shock. The taller boy is opposite him. His pristine uniform is coated in flour. It is even dusted over his chin and right at the tip of his round nose.

At first his lips pull back to reveal white teeth - bottom ones a little crooked. They fold endearingly at the corners, nose scrunching to emphasise chubby cheeks, eyes crinkling in the corners and brown disappearing under the crescent moon folds of his skin.

His laugh is like music. It mimics the piano he dances to, as if the very notes had woven their way into his core, exploding from his mouth in a heavenly song of awkward hiccups and a crease in his neck.

Hyungwon laughs, and Minhyuk’s heart skips a beat.

Eventually they find themselves sat in front of the oven. Both cross-legged, both hanging onto the countertop as they press their noses to the humming machine. It feels as if they are toddlers, no more than five, watching their cake rise as if they can already taste the chocolate.

“Your mom seems nice,” Hyungwon says, cross-eyed while rubbing at the flour on his nose.

Minhyuk looks at him.

Truly looks at him, at the odd, endearing stranger he wants so badly to be friends with. At the dorky twist of his slim fingers that still seem so elegant. At the waterfall of his hair, the puffiness of his lips in an adorable pout, the slight fold of baby weight that still made his chin and jaw soft.

“You’re always welcome here, you know,” he says, quietly, afraid to spook the shy boy. “Always. No matter what.”

Hyungwon smiles. The sparkle in his eye twinkled under the setting sun that fills the room with warm gold. It is a strange thing, to see him smile so freely, to feel the molten rock of his heart melt all his limbs.

“Thank you, Minhyuk,” Hyungwon breathes, and it is full of more emotion than ever before.   
  


  
  
  
  
  


The next day is a Friday. Hyungwon’s handkerchief is blue. The knot is pulled just off centre, when Minhyuk finds him waiting by the school gate in the biting cold, that the smaller boy just wishes he could reach out and set it right. 

They walk home together. Unspoken boundaries settle between them like the snow that was slowly giving way to the daffodil bulbs poking from spindly grass. It seemed it would always be this way - they would walk, Minhyuk would talk, Hyungwon would not.

But they had broken the pattern yesterday.

It seemed that, today, when Hyungwon begins to follow Minhyuk to his house and the older daren’t point it out, that the pattern was beginning to change.

Flighty Minhyuk bounces on the balls of his feet. The air tastes like salt and the withdrawn presence of his house blends into the grey sky.

“Want to come in again?” he asks, when they have both been standing in front of the building for a minute and the awkwardness is echoed in Hyungwon’s intense stare.”We can bake more cupcakes,”

“Can I stay the night? I want to make biscuits too,” Hyungwon says.

It seems Minhyuk would never grow tired of hearing the taller open up, just a little more. He feels as if he is sifting through piles of sand, and the sun is scalding on his back and his skin is peeling from heat, dry hands digging until they happen upon golden treasures that tell him just a little more about the stranger with the handkerchiefs.

“Alright,” he breathes, grinning, clearly excited. Hyungwon had never  _ asked _ to be with him before. Minhyuk was so incredibly delighted.

And then Hyungwon smiled. Caramel skin framed by a dusting of rose, bleak background nothing compared to the beautiful, glowing happiness of his gummy smile.

  
  
  
  
  


They end up in Minhyuk’s room when the sky has already darkened with the early sunsets of spring. The room smells of the cookies they have just baked - of chocolate and icing and laughter when they accidentally spilt chocolate chips across the counter and kicked them under a cupboard.

Minhyuk flops upon his bed like a fish upon land and Hyungwon’s eyes crinkle at the corners. He remains awkward, lanky body hunching in the doorway with his familiar look of odd caution on his beautiful features, until Minhyuk waves him in and clears his single desk chair of week-old washing so the other has somewhere to sit.

“This is fun,” Minhyuk grins. There is icing on his finger, and when he licks it off the sweetness explodes like the happiness he feels. Hyungwon is in his  _ room. _

“I’m afraid I don’t know what to do in other people’s rooms,” Hyungwon offers. His voice is quiet. Withdrawn. Apologetic.

Minhyuk frowns. “Do you not go round your friends houses?”

“I don’t have any friends.”

Minhyuk pauses.

Hyungwon is looking at him. Holding his gaze in that nerve-wracking habit of his, although his rich brown eyes are guarded, small, young. There is a line in his pressed lips that indicate fear. A barrier was thrust up between them, and from his obvious posture, he did not really want to break it down.

Minhyuk thinks, if it had been anyone else, he would have asked why.

But this is Hyungwon, and Hyungwon is so, so different.

“I’m your friend,” Minhyuk says. He wiped his sticky fingers on his uniform slacks, brushes his hair back from his face, before sticking out his hand in a fashion so typical of his quick personality.

“What are you doing?” asks Hyungwon.

“We need to Pinky Promise!” Minhyuk says, tone dramatic, eyebrows drawing together to force an air of seriousness. “If we’re going to be friends forever, we need to pinky promise. To never leave each other,”

Hyungwon looks at him.

“Alright,” he breathes.

Their hands meet. Minhyuk entwines his small finger with Hyungwon’s. Their skin, together, is slightly rough from the cold weather. With a start Minhyuk realises the taller has eczema. It patterns his knuckles in a faded red, and where his sleeves pull up there is obviously irritation.

It makes Minhyuk smile. He is learning, about Hyungwon, through looking. The other does not say, so he must  _ look. _

It is not long before Minhyuk has collapsed on his bed and begins flicking through his phone. The air tastes of excitement, and Hyungwon seems on the edge of his seat (still inappropriately poised, but hesitantly leaning forward, as if wishing beyond anything else to be involved).

“Here. Listen. Since we’re friends now, you have to like my music,”

The earthquake explosion of heavy guitar caused the awkward, lanky dancer to draw his brows together in the picture of a storm. “Is this rock?”

Minhyuk giggles and shakes his head. The electro beats wash over him - similar, he thinks, to the notes he dances too, and yet the furthest from Hyungwon’s piano - and he finds himself hitting the air, the imaginary drum set hovering in front of his grinning face. “It’s like.. Japanese punk-indie-pop,”

“You’re a dork,”

Minhyuk gasps. The bed creaks when he sits up, arm waving in an offended flourish, chorus a cacophony which accompanies him. “I am not!”

“You are,” Hyungwon smiles. It is almost a grin - not quite, but almost, the corners of his mouth dimple just so it seems as if he is teasing.

“Fine, then. If I’m such a dork show me  _ your _ music.'

Hyungwon shrugs. He takes the phone Minhyuk holds out and perches hesitantly on the edge of the bed (the covers barely even dip he is so light, merely a feather fallen from a newborn bird).

“Listen,” he says, and presses play.

The piano is the first thing. It dances along the air with an obvious melancholy - Minhyuk falls to lie down, and he’s innately surprised when Hyungwon does the same.

Soon they lie, side by side, the piano accompanied by a lamenting violin. Minyuks breath catches in his throat as if he has just taken a dive underwater. As if icy sea has frozen his entire body, kept it captive under tumultuous waves, because he is suddenly so aware of the taller next to him.

The song drifted, twisting, pulling at notes until they told only of sorrow, of heartbreak, of grief. 

It was so s _ ad. _ It hurts. The piano pricks his eyes. The notes make his throat sting.

“What’s this called?” Minhyuk asks. His voice sounds a thousand miles away, floating far above on the surface of his crashing waves.

“The Night of the First Breakup,” Hyungwon whispers.

“Do songs like this not just break your heart?”

“That’s the point,” Hyungwon says. It seems far more real than anything he has ever said before - as if, for once, passion moulds his words. “I like to listen to songs to break my heart, over and over, until it is in a million little pieces. That way, when a person breaks my heart for the first time, I won’t feel anything at all.”

“That’s a stupid way to live.”

“Is there any better way?”

“You can hope,” says Minhyuk, and turns over so he can look at Hyungwon. His side profile is illuminated by the glow of his lamp - a halo of orange against the richness of his skin, outlining the gentle curve of his nose and the pillowy ‘v’ of his lips.

“Hope is irrational,” Hyungwon says. Once again, the things he hides shift just beneath his blank features - pulling, ever so slightly, at his eyebrows, weighing down his lips until they grow tense and angry. Minhyuk wonders - why is he so sad? 

“Hope is beautiful,” Minhyuk insists. “Hope is like.. Like that moment as you go up a rollercoaster, and you’re not quite sure yet if it was a good or bad idea, but there’s no going back and even if you want to shout to leave there is nothing you can do.” The older tries to visualize what he’s saying, grasping at the air with his hands. “Just.. the idea of wanting, of pining, of letting yourself feel all the good and bad emotions in  _ hope _ that it’ll turn out alright.. In the hope that you’ll find someone that fits you. That you want to be with forever and ever and ever.”

It is then that Minhyuk realises Hyungwon is staring at him. The depth of his brown eyes swallows him whole, into the warm darkness he does not mind, sucking the words from his mouth and causing his breath to falter.

It is but a few seconds that seem a lifetime before Hyungwon speaks.

“Maybe I’ll try hope,” he says.

That is all he says.

And then the spell is broken. They spend an hour listening to songs from each other in turn.

Minhyuk’s songs seem too much for the small, cramped room. Hyungwon’s seem barely enough to be heard.

“Where do I sleep?” Hyungwon asks with a yawn, when the sun has long since left pressing cold night in its wake and the notes tacked to Minhyuk’s wall scream at him with study deadlines he is ignoring.

“Here,” Minhyuk says, rolling over to squish into the corner of his own bed. It gives the taller boy a slightly bigger sliver of bed, but Hyungwon seems unconvinced.

“I can’t sleep here. This is your bed.”

“Yes, but we’re friends forever now, so it’s  _ our _ bed,” Minhyuk giggles. He wrestles with the covers for a few moments, acting like an explorer battling a snake in the depths of some foreign jungle, before dragging it up to both their chins and snuggling into his pillow.

“Alright,” laughs Hyungwon -  _ laughs _ Hyungwon, the descriptor was still strange to Minhyuk. He slips one hand under the pillow, and flicks off the bedside lamp. “Goodnight, friend,”

“Night,”   
  


“That wasn’t very polite.”

“I’m still mad you called me a dork,” Minhyuk grumbles. In the darkness of his room, it is comforting, teasing. A secret between them.

“Alright, dork,” Hyungwon mumbles, drowsiness staining his velvety voice, dragging them both deeper into slumber. 

“Hold my hand?” Minhyuk asks.

And he does not know where it comes from. He hates it, immediately, the fear rising up like burning stomach acid, eyes flying wide open only to be greeted by terrible darkness. Why would he say that? Why would he let his guard down so openly, be far too much for the introverted Hyungwon, who had made no move to touch him besides from during dance.

“I’m sorry,” Minhyuk blurts out. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean- you don’t have to-”

“Minhyuk,”

The name washes over him, and he shivers, retracting so his own back meets his own wall and is cold against his skin. 

“Yes?”

A pause.

“Alright.”

Minhyuk thinks he has never felt more than in the moment Hyungwon first took his hand.

It was slow. Cautious. Fumbling fingers finding Minhyuk’s in the darkness, soft sleeves of their pyjamas rustling together (Hyungwon had borrowed Minhyuk’s checkered jumper and not even commented that it was too small).

Hyungwon holds his hand. It is warm and comforting. Soft, the bumps of eczema scraping across the pads of Minhyuk’s fingers, the long, knobbly joints curling around his palm. It felt like an anchor, a rock. A stable ship calming the waves of Minhyuk’s mind, dragging him deeper, deeper underwater, but also letting him breath for a second at a time.

“Thank you,” says Minhyuk.

And it suddenly seems like he was not too much. Minhyuk could have cried, because he could feel Hyungwon taking some of him, sifting it into his palm and locking it away to keep, letting Minhyuk be a little more Minhyuk but a little less guilty for it.

Hyungwon held Minhyuk’s hand, and they fell asleep in silence.

  
  
  
  


Their friendship exists in some sphere outside of normalcy. It is a bubble, floating far above reality, containing within holographic walls that reflect the outside world and keep their quiet conversation in. Minhyuk finds Hyungwon is like a void. Not an Earth - he is not enough of an existence to replicate any sort of gravity - but a black hole, a constant pulling of intrigue, a near impossible escape of curiosity.

Minhyuk likes it when Hyungwon laughs. Minhyuk likes it when Hyungwon picks at the flower buds while they walk home during spring. Minhyuk likes it when Hyungwon asks questions, when his big eyes narrow and the brown sparkles with teasing mischief.

Minhyuk likes Hyungwon, and he thinks Hyungwon likes him back.

Hyungwon is slow to bloom. Much like the flowers that peek their heads through the morning frost that melts into glittering dew under weak rays of sun, Hyungwon blossoms slowly, cautiously, and yet so ready at the same time. It was as if he had lain dormant for so long in cold earth, and now, upon standing in the face of Minhyuk’s ferocious warmth, he was finally realising what it felt like to spread his petals.

Minhyuk thinks Hyungwon’s petals are the most beautiful colours - rich browns and deep maroons and the beige of his favourite handkerchief.

March has long since given way to April when Hyungwon changes the pattern once again. Minhyuk is having fun, so much fun, feeling so comfortable while they both walk home after dancing that he does not even question whether the taller will stay round his. Of course he will. He does it all the time.

But then the younger pauses at the corner that separates their streets.. Minhyuk watches with wide eyes while he shifts his weight awkwardly, a deer just learning how to stand, before kicking at the ground and averting his eyes.

“You can come round mine,” he says quietly, voice but a gentle caress of Minhyuk’s cheek. “If you want. For dinner tonight.”

That this is Hyungwon letting him in just a little bit more. Allowing some of Minhyuk's  _ too much _ to fill in his  _ not enough _ .

“Alright,” says Minhyuk, and Hyungwon smiles.

They walk to Hyungwon’s house in silence. For once, Minhyuk holds back, hovering behind the taller boy while he attempts to fix his wrinkled blazer. What if the other’s parents don’t like him? What if they think he’s weird?

Hyungwon’s house is big and white and empty. It is clear from the mown lawn, trimmed bushes, big windows and traditional beam work that Hyungwon’s family has more money than Minhyuk - he was across the road, after all, and they were always better off. It felt strange stepping inside, however. He felt as if his shoes might tarnish the polished floor, or the dim lighting would collapse on his head.

Hyungwon’s house was bigger, and yet empty. Minhyuk’s walls had the habit of pressing on people with pictures and patterns and memories. Hyungwon’s were dim and blank and seemed to leach all the warmth from Minhyuk’s body.

The smell of spices and boiled egg drifts in a dense cloud through the emptiness.

“Is dinner always this early?” Minhyuk asks.

Hyungwon shrugs. He won’t meet Minhyuk’s eye, and the pallor of his face suggests he regrets asking. “There’s a schedule. It’s always at six.”

Minhyuk follows Hyungwon into the kitchen with his breath held. The taller has once again folded in on himself, shielded his petals from view, and he gives a bow when the corridor opens up into a kitchen.

A man stands by the back door, paper in his hand, crooked glasses on his face. The line of his nose is similar to Hyungwon’s, but it is his mom who shares the same pillowy lips, where she is kneading a concoction of stewed vegetables in a white bowl.

“Mom, dad. I brought a friend.”

Both look at him. Minhyuk offers a quick, awkward bow and blows his hair from his face. “I’m Minhyuk. It is lovely to meet you.”

There is a pause. Both parents share a look, and then Hyungwon’s father nods in acknowledgement.

“You’re lucky we made enough for four,” he says.

Hyungwon breathes a sigh of relief. It is barely heard above the bubbling stew, but Minhyuk makes sure to step forward and brush his hand - just a whisper of contact - to let the taller know he was there.

Minhyuk learns that, while Hyungwon’s parents are not unkind, while they ask a few isolated questions about how the both of them met and what he enjoys at school, they are detached. Both from their son and society. An oddly domestic and yet strangely lonely couple. 

Nobody talks throughout dinner. It is a sinking hole of complete silence. A confusing turmoil of nerves sloshes in Minhyuk’s growing stomach while he picks at his food and glances between Hyungwon and his parents. He is sat opposite the taller, and he cannot help but notice with a frown how he refuses to meet anybody eyes.

“Oh, Minhyun, dear. Can you pass the salt?”

Minhyuk looks up and gives a frantic nod. The misspeaking of his name does not bother him as he fumbles for the crystal shaker and hands it off to the elderly woman, but Hyungwon’s eyes draw together in that same frown he holds when he is not satisfied with his dance.

“It’s Minhyuk, mom,” he says quietly, putting his chopsticks back into his bowl.

His mom looks at him. A glint of surprise is held within her elegant face, but then she laughs off her sons unexpected objection.

“I’m sure Minhyuk knew what I meant, right?” she says, before turning back to her husband. “Are you enjoying your meal?”

When it is over, Hyungwon seems ready to bolt from the house itself. Minhyuk could recognise the tense way he gnawed on his chapped lips or the flighty way he scratched at the rashes on his hands.

“Come back to mine?” Minhyuk murmures, in a brief reprise when the others parents stood to leave, and Hyungwon’s gaze is locked on his plate.

The relief that plasters his face was undeniable, and Minhyuk’s chest swells with warmth.

They end up at his merely ten minutes later. Cold night spring dusted itself on their red noses and prickled goosebumps across flushed skin.

“That was nice,” Minhyuk says, flopping onto his bed only to reach across and flick the heater on. 

“No, it wasn’t,” Hyungwon deadpans, untying his handkerchief and laying it neatly on Minhyuk's desk, in the corner he always did.

“Oh, Minhyun, pass the salt,” Minhyuk mocks.

Laughter falls from the tallers lips and he perches at the edge of the bed. “My mom is trying. She’s just.. You know, a little cold, thats all. Thank you for coming.”

“I’m cold,” Minyuk groans, stuffing his hands under his shirt and curling into a ball. It is enough to dispel the heavy atmosphere and his chest is a million times lighter at Hyungwon’s growing, gummy smile.

“Suck it up,” he murmurs, crawling next to Minhyuk with a grin. His lanky body lies on top of the covers and his school blazer wrinkled in the position.

“We should huddle for warmth. You know, like penguins?”

“So now we’re penguins?”

“Squawk,” Minhyuk pokes Hyungwon’s side, only for the younger to roll his eyes.

“Penguins don’t make that noise, idiot.”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“You’re a dork, though.”

“Since when did us becoming friends turn into you being mean to me?” Minhyuk huffs. Without stopping to think, impulsiveness once again running through his limbs, he swings a leg over Hyungwon’s thigh and wraps an arm around his torso.

“Since you decided to suffocate me to death,” Hyungwon grumbles.

But he does not complain. Simply adjusts his arm so he can rest his head on Minhyuk’s fluff of cold hair, and then flick off the bedside lamp.

Hyungwon was so warm. Minhyuk could not help but sigh upon feeling the gentle waves of his breathing lull him into a drowsiness hard to match, a total, serene comfort of darkness he could only find in the other’s heat and smell of kimchi and schoolbooks.

And neither of them really ask why. Their friendship exists somewhere above the realm of living, in foggy clouds and peripheral vision, in the grateful darkness and heavy breathing.

For just a moment, as they both fell asleep fully clothed on Minhyuk’s bed, the stars not even awake outside, Minhyuk did not feel like too much. Hyungwon liked him no matter his flaws.

In that single moment, Minhyuk felt like just enough.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


From then on, it seems, they are best friends. Minhyuk didn’t think he’d ever had a best friend. He’d had  _ good _ friends, he’d had  _ fun _ friends, but not a  _ best _ friend. For too long he had been too much, spread across people, encapsulating everybody in his excitable bubble, not staying still long enough to be anything more than a simple friend.

But Hyungwon is a best friend. He knows it, in the bottom of his heart. Minhyuk is in the third grade of highschool but he’s only seventeen. Hyungwon is sixteen, and yet it feels like they’ve known each other for all the years before.

They have to be best friends. Minhyuk’s heart wouldn’t melt at a thousand degrees every time he saw the other if they weren’t.

Spring sifts into summer like the fall of sand through an hourglass. Gentle hues and morning calls give way to vivid greens and humid air. The early sunsets are replaced by early sunrises, the trees blossom and grow as they lift their spindly branches to the sky.

Minhyuk finds that, while he is stressed about exams, while his dance improves at the rate of a snail, while his hair matts to his face in sticky sweat as he traipses home after an exhausting day, Hyungwon is always by his side. He never leaves, the tall shadow, always hovering in places he least expects, small smile tugging at his handsome features and lanky body ready to tease.

As summer dawns, Hyungwon’s handkerchiefs grow in colour. Pastel blues become electric midnights. Muted pinks become vibrant magnetas. 

When Minhyuk waves bye from his road on the third Thursday of June, the day before they break up for summer holidays, his handkerchief is a bright yellow. ‘ _ Like you _ ,’ Hyungwon had said, when they had met at half past seven that morning. ‘ _ Like the sun. _ ’’

The humid press of summer nights hampers Minhyuk’s skin while he lies on his bed dressed only in fluffy bottom. An open window does nothing to cool the sticky sweat of his skin, and he feels strangely empty neither having to study or bake with Hyungwon.

A knock echoes through the house. It is quiet in the dead of night, barely more than a few taps that cause Minhyuk to sit up.

They sound again.

Minhyuk goes downstairs.

When he opens the door, he is greeted by the strangest of sights - Hyungwon, eyes red and puffy, face glistening with sweat, dressed in dance clothes and clutching a backpack overflowing with clothes.

“Can I stay here a while?” he pants. There is a frantic, scared look in his eye that hurts Minhyuk’s heart, as if he is already bracing himself for rejection but has opened his soul all the same.

“Of course,” Minhyuk breathes.

“Like.. a long while?”

“You'll have to pay me in handkerchiefs for rent,”

Hyungwon laughs. Hope stains the sound, but it is also overwhelmingly relieved. His shoulders relax ever so slightly, and his rich brown eyes twinkle in the night.

“You can have my rose bud one, if you want,” he says.

And that was that.

Hyungwon moves in seamlessly. They slept separately on the same bed that night - it was far too stuffy for the both of them, so at some point in the night, Minhyuk slipped from his own covers to curl up on his desk chair. He didn’t mind. He felt such emotion watching the handsome boy he now called his friend, peaceful in his slumber. It was not often Hyungwon’s blank face was serene, but in that moment, it seemed he had finally found calm.

Minhyuk had crept down the stairs early to explain to his mom that Hyungwon would be staying for a little while. The woman had grown concerned - but not for herself, merely for Hyungwon, and the quiet boy who only ever seemed to laugh around Minhyuk, who seemed to use him as an anchor, as a hold.

Minhyuk didn’t have the heart to tell her it was the other way around. That Hyungwon was the rock in his stormy waters, that he was the ship allowing him to breathe.

It is dark when Hyungwon asks him a question. They had been living together for about a week - in that time, school had ended, they had forgotten to dance, and the heat had only grown.

“Have you ever heard of the theory of broken windows?” Hyungwon asks. He lies exposed on Minhyuk’s bed - his short sleeved shirt showing off the eczema patches of his biceps, and his shorts stopping before knobbly, bruised knees.

“No?” Minhyuk questions. Sweat is stuck to his clammy palms as he tries to organise his closet to allow space for the few items of clothing Hyungwon brought.

“I read it in class, the other day.” The taller stares at the ceiling. “It was coined by some Americans in the 60s. It’s about.. About how crime is caused by disrepair. About how if you leave small things like graffiti, or litter, or broken windows in an area, then people think nobody cares, and crime gets worse.”

“That’s an oddly depressing theory.”

“I think it applies to people, too,”

Minhyuk looks at Hyungwon. He pauses in hanging up the yellow sweater, and his breath catches when he sees the golden sunlight dancing on the others caramel skin.

“So, like… if we let little things pass, it builds up and up and up into bigger things we don’t care to fix?”

Hyungwon smiles. “Exactly.” 

And Minhyuk realises, in that moment, that Hyungwon talks in a language that takes a little while to learn. That when he spoke of broken windows, he was talking of himself. That, in light of everything having happened that week, Hyungwon was offering an explanation the only way he knew how.

His house was a broken window, so he had to escape.

Minhyuk only hoped he could fix him.

  
  
  
  


Summer was uneventful, and yet it was the best summer Minhyuk had ever had.

A lot of time was spent indoors, cramped inside his messy room with a boy who only grew taller, who - over the course of the hot season - stretched his limbs two inches and started to tower over both Minhyuk and his mom. His mom seemed to like Hyungwon, doted on him as if he was her own son. Whenever the younger attempted to pay something - rent in pocket money cash, or by suggesting he would leave soon - Minhyuk’s mom would shake her head and point her cooking utensils at him.

“You will not leave my house young man, until you have taught my son more manners,”

And Minhyuk would laugh, Hyungwon would giggle, his mom would shoo them from the kitchen with the promise of cookies later. They both fell into the calming habit of sleeping until noon and walking at night, when the pressing humid air had shifted into a damp chilly dew that was not enough to make them cold, but enough that the open expanse of night sky took away the heat of the day.

“You ever wondered what life is like in Seoul?” Minhyuk asks one night in late August when the cicadas are in full song and the long grass caresses their feet. “Like.. big, huge towers, so many lights. Trams and trains and sirens and music. Constant screens, constant noise, constant… existence.”

“I fear I would disappear in a place like that,” Hyungwon smiles. He takes a seat on the swing in the park they have stumbled across more nights than one. His legs fold awkwardly at the height, and his hair sticks up in a fluffy bedhead.

“You’re too handsome to disappear,” Minhyuk rolls his eyes and sits next to him.

“You belong in the city. I belong nowhere,”

“You belong with me.”

A pause.

Hyungwon smiles. His eyes crinkle - and although they are tired, and cautious, and young, there is still something uniquely hopeful in them that makes Minhyuk’s heart swell and explode and collapse in on itself all at the same time.

“You’re such a dork. You know that, right?”

“Says the teenage boy who only listens to mozart and ballads,”

“Will you shut your big mouth and hold my hand?”

Minhyuk wrinkles his nose in disgust. With an exaggerated gesture of annoyance, he kicks at Hyungwons swing, laughs at the disgusted gasp that falls from his mouth, then wrestles the other’s bony hand into his own.

“This is so gross,” he mutters, but the warmth of Hyungwon’s hand lights up a thousand pinpricks of electricity across his palm, sets fire to his central nervous system, makes his stomach melt into the ground at a thousand and one degrees.

“You love me really,” Hyungwon teases.

And Minhyuk stills.

He catches the way the moonlight glitters on the rich brown of Hyungwon’s eyes. Sees the milky white catch on the slope of his soft cheeks, watches the way his lips part ever so slightly while he gazes at the sky above.

And suddenly the excitement in his stomach is so much more. It is no longer melting, but congealing, hardening into a heavy stone of dread that drags his body six feet underground.

Maybe he does love Hyungwon.

Maybe, he loves him a little more than he should.

  
  
  
  
  
  


They go back to school on a Thursday. It is a little odd, when Minhyuk wakes to the alarm he set the previous night, and there is a boy sleeping next to him in his tiny bed. For a moment the disorientation of dreams and reality collide in an explosion of the weak sun streaming through his window, and then Minhyuk smiles.

They dress in silence. Hyungwon seems considerably put out by the early time Minhyuk rises on school days, and spends another fifteen minutes curled in an impossibly small and yet indescribably cute ball under the wrinkled covers, before Minhyuk’s whining and pillow-hitting drags him to start donning his blazer and slacks. His eyes are puffy with sleep and entire being a shadow of drowsiness.

It is the first day of Minhyuk's last year of school. He feels strangely anxious about the whole ordeal. Would he get into college? Pass the entrance exam? Would he move away? Would he be stuck in his small town for the rest of his life?

“Don’t be nervous,” Hyungwon says softly, as they step into the dewy air of budding autumn and begin their familiar walk to school.

“Easy for you to say. You’re a baby. This is my last year.”

“And it’ll go fine, Minhyuk.”

“But what if it doesn’t? What if I mess up? What if I flunk out and have to move to Sweden to adopt a herd of orphan goats and spend my days running up and down mountains and drinking tea made from firewood?”

“That sounds like a lovely life.”

Minhyuk looks at Hyungwon. He looks at the teasing upturn of his lips, at the fond sparkle in his tired eyes, at the perfect press of his blazer he insisted on ironing himself.

“You absolutely cannot call me a dork from now on if you’re suggesting orphan goat herding is a good occupation.”

“Do you ever shut up?” Hyungwon laughs. It is a scratchy sound, rough with remnants of sleep. Minhyuk knew he was rambling with nerves, wiping his hands on his uniform, shifting his backpack again and again.

Minhyuk pauses when he feels cold hands touch his neck. Immediate instinct commands him to jerk backwards, but it was cut off by ice filtering into his veins and freezing his entire body.

Hyungwon was threading his handkerchief around Minhyuk’s neck. Tucking it under his collar with practiced movements, nimble fingers tying a neat knot and pulling at the fraying ends. It is a soft orange - for the beginning of autumn, when the trees are still green but the air smells like rain before it falls.

“This is for good luck,” Hyungwon says in lue of explanation. He spends a long time smoothing the creases of the silk but Minhyuk does not mind. This close he can count the others spidery eyelashes. Can see the sleepy dust crusted in the corners of his big eyes, can count the splash of acne across his left cheek, can see the peeling corners of his lips and the tiny smudge of toothpaste on his chin.

Without thinking, Minhyuk brushes at the fleck of white, and relishes in the sudden tenseness of the taller at the touch.

“Are you sure?” Minhyuk asks. The darkness of the other’s gaze swallows him whole, makes him feel like it’s midnight in some remote part of town.

“Idiot,” murmurs Hyungwon in response.

It is undeniably fond.

  
  
  
  
  


If spring was a slow blooming flower, and summer an onslaught of heat, autumn was the much needed lull. The leaves wrinkle and turned into clouds of orange and red that float from the pinkish sky on their walks home. The air smells like pumpkin spice and hot chocolate - not only because Minhyuk insists on bringing his flask of spiced cocoa everywhere, but because the very atmosphere embodied the season with the gentle breeze and waning sunsets.

Minhyuk likes to run through the piles of leaves at a hundred miles an hour and Hyungwon likes to watch, laughter wrinkling his handsome face, school blazer hanging from one shoulder while his body collapses in on itself. 

“You’re so boring!” Minhyuk yells one day, throwing a handful of damp rotten leaves at the others face, laughing when a mouldy brown one sticks to his sleeve. “It’s like you hate me! You wont even _ play _ .”

“You’re the older one here.”

“Shut up. I can be a kid if I want to.”

“I like watching you,” Hyungwon says. It causes Minhyuk to still, and a rose blush dusts itself over his cheeks while his stomach twists into a thousand knots.

“Why?” Minhyuk asks brusquely. He kicks at the muddy ground and his face forms a pout. “I’m hardly interesting. I’m very annoying. You’d be better not liking me at all.”

“I think you’re the best person in the entire world.”

Minhyuk looks at Hyungwon.

Something hovers between them, just out of reach.

And Minhyuk has always been one to stretch and catch forbidden feelings, but just that once, he leaves them be, and they walk home without another word.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Minhyuk thinks Hyungwon has forgotten his birthday.

He talked about it nonstop the week before. About the cards he received in the mail from his extended family, about what he wanted to do, about whether his mom would give him enough pocket money so they could both go to the cinema. It was his eighteenth birthday after all, he wanted to do something mature - but he knew Hyungwon was only sixteen, and he didn’t want to leave the other boy out.

But then Hyungwon gets sick. He doesn’t go to school on the Monday - two days before Minhyuk’s birthday, merely lies in bed with a green pallor and sticky forehead with empty packets of painkillers on the bedside. Minhyuk still lies next to him. Still curls up in his own bed and presses a wet cloth to his forehead and worries his own nails until they bleed out of fear.

Hyungwon is still sick on the Wednesday.

Minhyuk spends the first hour of his birthday downstairs, alone with his mom. Hyungwon sleeps in his room. His mom tries to get him to cheer up with some cake, and an envelope with 150,000 won as a birthday present. 

“What will you do with it?” his mom asks, a concerned glint in her eye.

Minhyuk shrugs. He thumbs the green notes absentmindedly. “Take Hyungwon out to dinner when he’s well.”

His mom sighs and forces a smile. It is tight in the corners. “Alright, sweetie. Why don’t you go to bed now, hmm? I’m sure Hyungwon will be better in the morning.”

Hyungwon is not better in the morning.

In fact, he is so out of it, when Minhyuk’s alarm rings for school he does not even stir. Just sleeps himself into oblivious surrounded by tissues. The corner of his mouth is crusted in spit, and his pallor is still green.

And Mihyuk tries really hard not to be sad, but it is impossible when the dark cloud hangs over him all day, casting his hunched frame in a shadow that occasionally spits rain and snow. He is sad because it’s his birthday, but Hyungwon is sick, and that's not Hyungwon’s fault, but Minhyuk really likes Hyungwon and he wished he could make him smile on his birthday. Not even his school friends can do much more to make him happy. They register the shadow hanging over his head and present him with a small cake, a balloon to tie around his wrist, a bundle of cards with cute doodles of puppies or cupcakes or music.

And Minhyuk likes them, but he thinks he likes Hyungwon more.

His birthday falls on a Thursday. He wasn’t going to dance - expected Hyungwon to be wide awake, expected to drag the younger to some fancy restaurant to spend all his birthday money on a single meal - but he decides nothing is holding him back. He should dance, if only to exhaust his muscles to find sleep easier that night. It’s not like he didn’t enjoy dancing.

When he steps into the studio, the lights are off, a strange contrast to the usual overexposure of the polished floor. It takes a second for him to flick the switch, and when the electrical bulbs flicker into existence, a gasp leaves his shocked lips.

The dance studio is covered in banners. Paper ones that sway in the breeze from the heater, garish shiny plastic ones that declare “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” in font far too blunt to be pretty, even a single metal one hung on a string across the mirrors. Balloons are arranged in clouds on the low ceiling, tied to the ballet bar and lumped in the corners. Music drifts from the speakers across the room - oddly familiar music.

Japanese punk-indie-pop music.

Hyungwon stands in the middle of the room. He is dressed in his wrinkled blazer. The handkerchief around his neck is a festive purple, and - while the bags under his eyes are a dark brown and his skin still holds the sheen of sickness - his eyes are lit up with a thousand pinpricks of light and he holds a cupcake in his spindly hands.

“Oh my god,” Minhyuk whispers.

“Happy birthday,” Hyungwon says. His voice blends into the music, and there is a crinkled smile on his face.

“Oh my god,” Minhyuk repeats. It is all too much. Too much for the boy who feels he is too much.

Hyungwon sets down the cupcake on the side and hurries over to Minhyuk. “I’m sorry there aren’t more balloons. I really was sick. When I woke up it was already noon - your mom told me you’d left for school, so I had to run to get everything organised.” The taller boy is clearly distressed. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for the first half of your birthday. I feel really bad.”

“Oh my god,” Minhyuk says, once again. It seems it is the only word he knows. As if the balloons and garlands and music and presents of the cramped dance room have stolen all his vocabulary and left him with limited options.

Hyungwon opens and closes his mouth. “Did you think I’d forgotten?”

“Yes,” Minhyuk says. His eyes prickle and his throat stings. Had Hyungwon done all this for him? Even when he was so sick he could not move?

“I’m sorry. Don’t cry- I’m really sorry- I just- I feel so bad-”

“I’m such a drama queen,” Minhyuk laments. He was laughing, but also crying, now. He vaguely recognises the burning track of wet tears as they run down his face and the taste of salt on his tongue.

Hyungwon was laughing, but he was also teary-eyed, rich brown glazed with emotions neither of them name. “You are. I almost die of the flu and forget your birthday, and you’re crying on me? How dare you,”

“Shut up!” Minhyuk cries, throwing himself into Hyungwons arms. The other was so lanky he could wrap his entire being around him, swallowing him up but also feeling infinitely smaller. “Thank you. Thank you so much. So, so much.”

There is an odd pause in which Hyungwon was frozen. Minhyuk grasps at his blazer, sniffling into his handkerchief and falling into the smell of books and pressed clothes, mind reeling because nobody had ever done something like this for him before and he didn’t know how to feel.

And then Hyungwon pats his head awkwardly, and hugs him back.

“You want your presents?” he asks after a moment of nothing (but also everything, depending on who was judging).

“There’s multiple?” Minhyuk gasps. He rubs at his eyes and nods profusely.

There is multiple.

A set of five handkerchiefs - one for every day of the week in garishly bright colours of neon yellows with pineapples and ugly blues with palm trees. Minhyuk loves them.

There is a recipe book solely for baking cupcakes and cookies, a pack of puppy dividers (Hyungwon always got mad because his folders were unorganised), a tiny anime keyring, and a notebook (“to write your future lyrics in”). 

It all seems to build up to something bigger, something better, something amazing that keeps Hyungwon on the edge of his seat in excitement and Minhyuk bounding in nerves.

And then the taller holds out two small envelopes. They are as white as the snow they first met in, and the address on the back is simply their names, printed immaculately, an unrecognisable logo in the corner.

“What are these?” Minhyuk asks, confused. He takes one in his hand. It is paper light, not much more than a feather, and wrinkles when he peels back the adhesive and pulls the single piece of paper from its depths.

“Forms,” Hyungwon says, eyes glittering with trepidation, but also excitement. “To audition for a performance company in Seoul. You just have to sign it - they’re in two weeks time.”

Minhyuk stills.

It seems all words have been stolen from him once again. A feat thought impossible achieved twice in one day.

What did the other mean? Forms for an  _ audition? _ In Seoul? Minhyuk has never been to Seoul. He had dreamed it - but surely Hyungwon has not gone so far as to get him a chance to stay there forever?

“Hyungwon?” Minhyuk chokes out. What should he feel, in that moment? It feels like he was drowning and burning at the same time. That his eyes were overflowing with glass, that his throat is seared shut with viscous oil that felt sticky on his tongue.

The forms are real.

Right at the top, the words “ _ Dear Lee Minhyuk _ ,” glint under the light.

Hyungwon shrugs. It seems he is suddenly shy. “My aunt works for a makeup company. Her colleagues have done work for some idols before and she knows an amateur director. So, I asked if she could get us each a private audition.” The taller averts his eyes and picks at his shoelaces from where they both sit on the floor surrounded by balloons and wrapping paper. “I figured - you’re an amazing dancer, and when you sing alone in your room, it’s beautiful.”

“Hyungwon?” Minhyuk repeats. It is filled with so much emotion - but not enough. Not enough to convey everything he feels in that moment, not enough to give credit to the beautiful, shy, loving boy in front of him, who would go so out of his way for a friend and yet had never had one before.

Hyungwon looks at him.

“The world should know your talent. It’s too much for me to just keep it to myself.”

Minhyuk cast the papers aside while a sob crawled its way up his throat. Hyungwon’s body hits the floor with a crash as Minhyuk launches himself on the other, gripping at his blazer, wrapping him in a hug so tight he fears he will never let go.

“I love you,” Minhyuk sniffles. “I love you so much, just so you know. You are the bestest friend in the entire world and I love you with my whole heart.”

Hyungwon laughs. It is undeniably relieved, and his eyes are fond when they focus on the boy currently straddling him. “I love you too, Minhyuk,” he says. “I’m sorry this is all I could give you. I know I’m not enough - you deserve the world, really-”

“Be quiet!” Minhyuk hits him around the shoulder. Laughter and tears mingle into a sound of happy denial. “You are so much more than enough, you hear me?”

“Stop comforting me! This is meant to be about you!”

“It’s about us!”

Hyungwon stops laughing.

“Let’s debut together,” he says. The shocking midnight of his hair corkscrews in multiple directions, and with a sharp pain in his heart, Minhyuk’s lungs shatter into a million pieces when he realises Hyungwon is the most beautiful boy he has ever seen, sickly pallor and all. “In some cool idol group. You can be the visual, I’ll be the dancer. I bet we’ll have like- like five whole members, and perform on music shows, and meet IU, and- and-”

“Alright,” Minhuk laughs. It is so full of hope. A birdsong of notes that string together a future in which Hyungwon is a part of. “Let’s debut together.”

  
  
  
  
  


They leave for Seoul in exactly two weeks time. The warm fingers of autumn brush the chill of winter, and they escape from their school with a note of required absence, giggling while they hurry across the hauntingly quiet grounds and down the midday streets to reach the only train station in their small town.

It takes about two hours to get there. Both of them radiate nervous energy sat on the train. Excited, terrified, bouncing up and down. Hyungwon seems more composed, but by the way he keeps shifting in his seat and the distant look in his eye while Minhyuk rambles on and on in that nervous habit of his and whips his head to stare out the window, he is truly, genuinely anxious.

The station is loud when they scramble out of the carriage. It thrusts them into another world, something alien, something unknown.

Every single screen blares information at them in patterns of numbers or letters or colours neither of them can interpret yet. The walls are covered in maps, but they can hardly be read, for the main Seoul station at half past four on a workday was a cacophony of voices. Every man holds a briefcase and a phone to his head. Every woman hurries across concrete with shoes too high to be comfortable. The colours were black suits, grey skirts, tartan blazers of nearby schools. The hoards of people pulse in time with the dings of arriving trains and the music by a nearby performer.

It is overwhelming.

Minhyuk thinks he could get used to it.

Hyungwon, however, looks absolutely terrified.

It was in moments like these when Minhyuk remembered just how young his best friend was, and, with all the fondness in the world, he wraps his own pinky around Hyungwons.

“Hey. It’ll be okay,” he says.

Hyungwon looks at him. “I know.”

And the most beautiful thing about their friendship, Minhyuk thinks, is how they’ve learnt the language of the other. How they converse without saying anything, but somehow saying everything in just a few plain words. Minhyuk’s  _ ‘It’ll be okay _ ,’ is an acknowledgement that he wants it so badly, that he is nervous, that he is scared, but that he can do it. Hyungwon’s  _ ‘I know,’ _ ’ is the fact that they have each other, and he is thankful, and he loves him.

“Let’s explore the city later, alright? Right now we just need to figure out where the company building is.”

Thankfully, the building was merely a ten minute walk from the main station - neither of them could have coped with figuring out the tube system so soon upon their arrival. It thrust itself from the cobbled streets of Seoul - a small and yet professional looking building swamped by apartments, businesses and road signs. Minhyuk thought Seoul was beautiful - with the constant beep of horns, the woosh of cars on roads, the winding back alleys with the criss-cross of electricity lines no longer the cage they were at home but a climbing frame to the blue-yellow sky.

The landscape is foreign. The culture, so different. But Hyungwon never leaves his side. And for that, Minhyuk is infinitely grateful.

Inside the squat, grey corridors, Minhyuk thinks he might throw up. His stomach is churning over and over again. His innards are beaten like the cupcakes he makes with Hyungwon on the weekends, when the mixture is frothing at the sides from the egg and the sugar makes his tongue tingle when he tastes it.

They have to audition separately.

Hyungwon stands back when an indifferent staff member beckons one of them into the audition room. He strokes Minhyuk’s hand, just once, a smile incredibly small but infinitely comforting painted on his nervous features.

“You got this,” he says. Minhyuk clutches the wrinkled admission paper to his chest and nods.

The room is low ceilinged. The polished wood floors squeak under his nervous footsteps. It is a little hard to breath, throat clogged by the daggering stares of the five staff members who sit by a speaker on tables filled with folders and paper cups of tea.

Minhyuk is nervous, but he makes sure to smile.

They watch him dance. They watch him sing. The boy tries desperately hard not to notice when their eyebrows draw together, or they pause in their writing and sit back to stare.

They ask him to pull back his hair from his forehead. They ask him if he is wearing no makeup.

Minhyuk shakes his head with vigour and rubs at his under eyes.

They dismiss him with a wave of their hand.

Minhyuk passes Hyungwon on his way out. The taller is pale but calm. His lips press into a handsome line and his black hair falls neatly over his forehead.

Minhyuk’s head spins, and he thinks, he  _ knows, _ Hyungwon will be okay.

  
  
  


Hyungwon returns much like he always does, doused in a shadow of secrecy, eyes trained on the floor in respect. Minyuk’s stomach churns. Did it not go as planned? Was he alright?

For a brief moment, their gazes met.

Hyungwon’s lips quirked into a shy smile. Minhyuk beamed back, his own face a sun of happiness.

“Thank you both for you time. If we wish to work with you, you shall get a letter. Goodbye.”

The staff was brass and curt. It left no time for the two boys to bundle their coats into their hands and stumble their way out the door. The sharp slap of cold December air was a shocking contrast to the stuffy, low lit indoors, but they had no time to gawk at the glittering night sky, scrambling along the concrete pathway and with quick steps until they swung round the corner of the street. 

“Oh my god,” Minhyuk exclaimed, breathless, panting even without exertion. His eyes sparkled and he skipped with joy. “Oh my god, that was amazing!”

“It was terrifying,” Hyungwon deadpanned, although his voice was light, airy, the whispers of laughter threading his tone.

“It was amazing!” Minhyuk took Hyungwon’s hands in his. The rough patches of eczema were irritated by the cold and it must have hurt for the older boy to grab them so quickly, but Hyungwon simply broke into laughter, cheeks swelling into soft apples and eyebrows drawn together in disbelief. “We really auditioned for a company!”

“We did!”

“We’re going to get in and- and train together and finally move away and spend our lives in this big city and- oh, look!”

Minhyuk’s rambling speech was cut by the abrupt turning in the street. The young boy had been so distracted by the adrenaline lighting his body on fire, he had not even noticed where they were wandering.

A ripe smell of salt water and coffee punctuated the air. People talked, let out soft exhales with enamoured smiles on their bundles faces, couples walking hand in gloved hand as the icy wind caressed their red cheeks.

A boulevard on the edges of the Han River, with glittering lights like gems sparkling on the water.   
“It’s just a river.” The phrase Hyungwon mutters is tainted with amusement and whisked away by the breeze. When Minhyuk hurries to peer over the painted railing and gasp at the ebbing waves, Hyungwon follows not even questioning it. 

“It’s beautiful,” Minhyuk says.

There is a pause.

“I can think of things that are nicer to look at,”

Minhyuk looks up.

Gentle music from a river-side cafe douses his body in warmth. Hyunwon is staring at him. Gaze wide and honest, rich brown coloured orange by the streetlamps and skin flickering with the reflection on water.

For what feels like the millionth time, Minhyuk finds himself lost in Hyungwon’s eyes. There is nothing keeping him tethered to reality. Instead he is floating through the void that drew him in a year ago, chest pained as his breath was robbed from his lungs, stomach curling in on itself out of fear.

“Thank you for being the bestest best friend to ever best friend,” he says quietly. Hyungwon snorts and rolls his eyes, hands stuffed in his pockets, red nose cast to the ground in bashfulness.

“You’re a dork,” he murmurs in reply.

“I’m serious. Without you, I could have been an actual goat farmer by now. Or -  _ worse  _ \- a sheep farmer. I could be sat at my little spinning wheel all day threading wool through a rickety wheel and sewing it into winter cloaks to keep me warm in the mountains.” There is a glimmer of laughter on Hyungwon’s face at such a ramble. It retreats when Minhyuk takes a step forward - relishing, for just a moment, the heat radiating from the tallers body - before pulling the others hand from his pocket and entwining their little fingers. “Instead, I have you.”

Their breath billows in clouds of hope around them. Hyungwon looks down at their entwined hands, and when he spoke, the shadows of the streetlamps did nothing to dull the love in his voice.

“You know, when we first met. I didn’t believe in your pinky promise. I.. I was scared. I’d never had a best friend. I thought you’d leave when you realised I was boring.”

“You’re not boring. You’re Chae Hyungwon.”

It was a beautiful thing to see the taller throw his head back in a laugh like windchimes and gravel. It was even more beautiful when he hung his head with a shy smile and squeezed their fingers together.

“Thank you, Minhyuk.”

Minhyuk held up their hands. Protected by the walls of their physical beings, he felt it was so much more than when they had first promised, alone in a teenage room with nobody else around. Now they were on the edge of the world, the edge of adulthood. Peering into the doorway of life and clutching each other for the next step.

It was in that moment, Minhyuk realises that Hyungwon took away a little of his too much. He fed on it like ice cream, like the first ever cupcakes they made together. Chipped away tiny bits of joy until he too could smile and laugh and live.

It was also in that moment that Minhyuk realises one other, more dangerous thing. A feeling that had been creeping up on him for so long it had gone unnoticed and ignored. Perhaps Minhyuk had not wanted to know. Purposely not wished to understand.

He is so badly, so terribly, so  _ deeply _ in love with Chae Hyungwon.

Maybe a little more than a friend.

“Promise we’ll debut together?” Minhyuk whispers, when his lungs have shriveled up and his heart refuses to beat. The riverside wind teases his hair and the streetlamps cast shadows on his face.

Hyungwon looks at him, and Hyungwon smiles.

“I promise.”

  
  
  
  



End file.
